


Camisado

by fallingintoplace



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Asperger Syndrome, Depression, Disordered Eating, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 04:24:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12740967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallingintoplace/pseuds/fallingintoplace
Summary: It's getting bad again, and Mikey doesn't know how to live.





	Camisado

**Author's Note:**

> Hey my friends. This is a sad fic without a satisfying ending. Triggers for implied self harm and unhealthy food relationships but it's just full of depression.  
> Stay safe.

He didn’t know how to tell them it was getting bad again. That the bad thoughts were coming back, that they were making sense again. He knew that they hurt, but he couldn’t help listening. He wanted to hurt. And relapse was such a scary word, but it didn’t feel scary and he was grateful that he had thrown away his blades before junior year started. This was going to be the year of health and safety.

Except it wasn’t. His arms and thighs had small red marks from when he pinched himself over and over, trying to clear the fog in his mind. There had been too many nights that left him crying, because he  wanted needed to die but he knew he couldn’t. The bottle of sleeping meds on his dresser was just so tempting, though. But he was stronger than his thoughts, and he could make it past this, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to fight to get back to a happy mindset when he knew he’d just crash again and again and again. It was all that he knew. 

And Mikey couldn’t even think of a time when he was happy. He remembered a series he read in middle school, back when he was too shy to talk to people and too stressed to fully exist, that had a villain whose motivation was that he wanted to live forever. He didn’t understand that. Why would you want to live forever? Why would you want to live in the first place? It definitely didn’t seem like it was worth unleashing a horde of demons. 

His therapist was surprised when he told her that he’d been feeling hopeless like that for what seemed like forever. He’d been seeing this therapist since fourth grade, and the books were in sixth grade, but how was his therapist supposed to know that if he hadn’t told her? He thought wanting to die was normal. It apparently wasn’t. Just one more thing to make him weird.

He knew he was weird. Normal people didn’t want to die, normal people didn’t spend time in hospitals, normal people don’t take five pills to stay sane. He wasn’t normal. He wasn’t even close. And he wasn’t even normal with his…problems either. It wasn’t normal for someone with social anxiety to talk too much out of anxiety. Like how did that even work? He didn’t understand.

When the anxiety got too bad, he’d practice the grounding techniques he learned in his residential treatment center. Three toe taps, three heel taps, tap your thighs three times, rub your arms three times, and press your hands to your cheeks. Then do a body scan, so you can notice all of the absolutely _lovely_ sensations in your body, sensations that you try to ignore like the constricted chest, and the knotted stomach, the tense shoulders and dry mouth and pounding headache and shaking hands _he tried to not notice them and the mindfulness made it worse_

Everything felt worse this time around because he knew now how hard it was to get back up. He didn’t want to tell anyone because sharps would be locked up, he wouldn’t be allowed even a goddamn butter knife, and the tongue checks to make sure he actually swallowed his pills were humiliating. Mikey always, well, _almost_ always took his meds. It wasn’t like he was still stockpiling them for a 2 a.m. escape plan. He was safe, just unhappy about it.

But then the pharmacy didn’t have his anxiety meds, the one that scares him because it literally slows down his heart to the point where he gets dizzy when he stands up, though that might be from not eating enough or constant dehydration. He’s not really sure. He knows he needs to eat more, but it’s hard and he doesn’t want to, especially when he’s too anxious to eat, like now because he didn’t have his medicine. And seeing the scale go down makes him a little happy, though the fear before he actually weighs himself almost makes it not worth it. But the number going down just a little bit does make it worthwhile, the not eating and the exercising overnight so his parents don’t get worried. He eats around them, but not when he’s alone because he doesn’t deserve food, he’s too fat to have a problem. He used to eat away his feelings, so this is penance for his childhood. Mikey was well aware that he had a bad relationship with food, or whatever the current phrase floating around online was, but how was he supposed to develop a _good_ relationship with food when he grew up with a combination lock on the pantry?

His parents weren’t starving him, the lock wasn’t even _for_ him. It was for Gerard. Gerard couldn’t control his eating to the point he was almost eating himself to death. He had autism, because apparently Asperger’s Syndrome wasn’t a thing anymore and Mikey had never been more grateful that Gerard was at college now, though he was still eating and gaining weight and Mikey felt like he had to balance Gee out. He always had.

Gerard had been the more difficult child growing up, always getting into fights and arguments, and the amount of times he just walked right out of his middle school and the police had to pick him up was too much to count on two hands and maybe a foot. He never got good grades either. Therefore, Mikey had to be good, he had to get good grades to even it out. Gerard was such a challenge to their parents that Mikey wanted to make sure he didn’t cause them any problems. He had to be perfect. So perfect meant he never broke any rules, and he didn’t talk much anymore because he didn’t want to say the wrong thing, and school became the most stressful thing in his life. He had to be right, had to be perfect, and he couldn’t always. He was smart, but perfection isn’t possible. He remembered the first time he got a B+ on an assignment. He broke down so badly that he sat in the counselor’s office for the rest of the day. It was in 5th grade. It didn’t really get better. Not until recently, at least.

He still checked his grades obsessively but wasn’t too overwhelmed when he didn’t do well, which was becoming more and more often with his lack of concentration. He just didn’t have the energy to even try so he’d just go home and sit on the floor, looking at the wall with his self pity playlist loud. It felt like that one winter where it was just too cold inside of him and he barely remembered it because there wasn’t anything to remember. It all ran together into one never-ending nightmare of not functioning, not existing. That was the time when he didn’t eat, not to lose weight, but because he literally could not muster up the energy to move, so his parents would sit at the table with him until he ate at least half of his plate, even if it made them late to work. They were so supportive, they loved him so much, which just made him feel guilty. How could he kill himself when he had people who’d invested so much time and effort into a him, even though he wasn’t worth it?

The thing that kept him tethered the most was a conversation he had with his mom about Gerard. His mom had a very hard pregnancy(shouldn’t have had a second child, would’ve spared everyone the misery) and was so happy to have a baby, to have Gerard. She said it felt like Gerard died when they finally got a diagnosis for what was wrong with him. She said it was heartbreaking just looking at him sometimes, because he doesn’t always seem like a person. She said that she’d never be able to connect with him like she wanted to, and that Mikey was her second chance as a child. So if Mikey killed himself, his mom would be stuck with Gerard and Mikey couldn’t do that. It wasn’t fair.

And sometimes Mikey hated Gerard. He hated him for growing up a little scared, being well-acquainted with the back of his closet because Gerard didn’t like to go in there because it was dark. He hated Gerard for being embarrassing, but also for stealing his happiness sometimes, his achievements, like when he finally got to play for the orchestra, Gerard threw such a fit that his parents couldn’t come to see him play. It made him feel like he wasn’t as important, wasn’t as worthy of attention as Gerard. But what Mikey hated him the most for was that Gerard did have other mental health problems, like anxiety but also depression, but it was more the inertia depression, the directionless-hopeless-careless depression, not the i’m-going-to-fucking-kill-myself type. What wasn’t fair was that Gerard didn’t want to die, too, which Mikey didn’t understand, because Mikey was able to function socially and actually had friends and _he_ still wanted to die and he couldn’t understand how Gerard would want to live in such a stunted way. He knew he wouldn’t want to live like Gerard. But maybe that was because he didn’t want to live in general.

He still wants to die, and his doctor doesn’t understand that nothing will make him “want to join the world of the living” because he wasn’t alive and would never belong. He wasn’t cut out for life. He was breaking down again, crashing and burning, regretting that he got rid of his blades because he wanted the blood to carry his thoughts out, he wanted to feel again and hurt again. He wanted something to change,

He was just scared.

And lonely.

**Author's Note:**

> I love you guys. Take care


End file.
